Bus From Baghdad

That is the title of an open-air photo exhibition that I saw lately in Copenhagen.

The Danish photographer, Henrik Saxgren, has photographed and portrayed 30 busdrivers, who are all foreigners, that all have come to Denmark to pursue a dream of a good life. Their stories are different and tales of a hard life - but all of them have a thing in common: they are all proud of their jobs as busdrivers as they have a job and can contribute to the country which is now their home.

Now there is room for thought: you often take your bus drivers for granted and never give any second thoughts to why they are in Denmark: what brought them here? When I grew up in the country side, we were all on first name basis with the busdrivers - here in the city it simply does not happen. Quite sad actually, as I have fond memories of some of the busdrivers from back then, as they have this ability to cheer everybody up while driving the bus just by them being there - lots of bad days were turned into good days during those bus rides.

Later this year, a book is published with their stories and I hope that a lot of schools will put this on the students' reading list and learn about integration of foreigners into our country. In English class at school, I remembered that we read a book called "The Melting Pot" which contained small stories, excerpts from letters, photos, statistics etc. about the people who came to the US in pursuit of getting a new chance (have later on tried to find a copy of that book without luck). I am glad that we had to read that, as it has giving me a some insight to the country that I like to visit on vacations - and the must-do of visiting the Tennaments and Ellis Island in New York and Angel Island in California.